HyperSizer v6 Keys in on Manufacturing Optimization

Riding the trend of composites becoming a go-to material for
a variety of products - from aircraft to wind turbine blades - Collier Research Corp. released an upgrade
of its HyperSizer structural sizing and analysis tool with new capabilities to
optimize manufacturing.

In keeping with the evolution of the software and the use of
composites across a variety of industries, HyperSizer v6, the latest
commercialized version of software developed and used at NASA, now incorporates
features designed to address two of industry's biggest concerns, according to
Craig Collier, president of Collier Research. That is the inaccuracy of
analysis functions within current tools to validate test data and some of the
inefficiencies surrounding manufacturing of composites.

"We're finding that industry has now embraced composites as
more mainstream," says Collier, who says, up to date, companies have been conservative
in terms of their design and use of composites. Specifically, because of the
existing tools' limitations in predicting and analyzing failures, engineering
groups have been limited in exploring optimized composite layups simultaneously
with other design variables. This inevitably leads to design inefficiencies and
adding unnecessary weight to composite-based designs, Collier explains.

To address those deficiencies, HyperSizer v6 now has an
integrated suite of failure analysis predictions that are validated to test
data, an enhancement that will allow engineering groups to be less conservative
in their use of composites, Collier says. The software now also automates the process of
identifying, defining and controlling ply-count compatibility, laminate
sequencing, interleaving and ply-drop minimization-all steps that have historically
been done manually and been an onerous burden for engineers, limiting their ability
to zero in on optimal designs.

"It used to be done manually and it wasn't done well because
it was such as tedious process," Collier says. "There are so many billions of
combination and ways to do things, without automation, it was difficult to
explore all the possibilities."

Sandia National Laboratories,
specifically its Wind Energy Technology Department, is using HyperSizer and
partnering with Collier Research, on large-scale
wind turbine design. Tom Ashwill, technical leader in the lab, says the
HyperSizer v6's automation enhancements should address the challenges designers
have today in terms of knowing what shape to make a laminate zone, where to
stop one zone and start another or how to determine an optimum thickness of
layups in different zones. It is also difficult to manually calculate how to
handle transitions between zones and where to position many individual ply
drops and adds in a single blade, Ashwill says. Using blade-loading results
from FEA, HyperSizer will map the laminate zones to more accurately represent
the blade physics and calculate a ply stacking sequence for each zone-a
capability, Ashwill says, that will greatly improve the composite design and
manufacture process.

In addition to these features, HyperSizer v6 also
incorporates automated compression, shear and compression-shear post-buckling
analyses--features designed to help engineers cut weight in aluminum skin
airframes. These analyses, which have
been difficult to perform with nonlinear FEA, are now extended to composite
materials in this new release.

As they said, It is "difficult to explore all possibilities." Since failures come from the unpredictable, I wonder how well failure analysis software holds up to real world tests. Testing the capabilities of materials and systems is one thing, but a sudden lightening strike is another. Does anyone else thing that failure analysis should be more thorough? There is an infinite number of possibilities, but in most cases it comes down to small collection of normal and obscure.

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